In a routine

It has been a little over a month since classes have started and I feel like I am in a routine now. Overall, I am pleased with the business education I received from the University of Washington, because so far nothing I have learned has been significantly different than what I learned 7 years ago in undergrad. The only difference is that the lecture is more discussion based and way more people ask questions and share experiences related to the material. Although I have tons of in class time, I do very little out of class studying and have yet to go to a single TA session since everything is review. This has meant that I have had more time to play soccer and basketball, go to the gym, and do career prep stuff.

The weird thing about classes at INSEAD is that there is no fixed schedule. Any class can be on any day of the week at any time and it changes every week. I have no clue what is driving it. The good news is that they have an official calendar and all the class times automatically appear in my calendar. At times I feel like a calendar slave as I have no idea how my week will go, I just follow my calendar from appointment to appointment. I am usually on campus from 8:30 am until 6:30 pm at night, and then I go to the gym or play soccer/basketball. Luckily, there is a decent cafeteria on campus that is subsidized pricing. I am subsidizing it with my tuition, but it looks cheap when I go, like only 3-4 euros for a big meal.

My section group of 80 has also settled into a groove. I know everyone’s name and different characters have emerged. For example, there is a girl who has a comment for everything the professor says. Usually, it’s completely irrelevant but the class appreciates her off-the-wall comments as comic relief. The people in my class are from ages 25-35 and from a variety of backgrounds.

I gained notoriety in the class when we did a trivia exercise in class and I got 10/10 questions correct, when most students only got 3-5 correct, for which I won a bottle of champagne from the professor. Also, during a class in accounting, we did a case study on financial statement fraud committed at Diamond Foods in 2011. Coincidentally, Diamond Foods was one of Deloitte’s clients in San Francisco when I worked there and I had friends who worked on that audit so I was able to share my perspective with the class. Talk about random.

The school year is divided into five seven-week periods, and we are now in week 6/7 so classes are already wrapping up and we will have final exams soon. I also have to choose which campuses I will be on for P4 (September/October) and P5 (November/December) on Wednesday. My choices are the following:
  1. P4 in Wharton (Philadelphia) & P5 in Fontainebleau
  2. P4 & P5 in Kellogg (Chicago)
  3. P4 in Fontainebleau & P5 in Wharton

I am leaning towards option 2 as it would allow me to be in the United States for the entirety of full-time recruiting season, which will be helpful for getting a full-time job offer in the United States when I graduate. It is also nice because Kellogg is 10 weeks, and I would get credit for 14 weeks’ worth of coursework. This means I could intern two weeks longer (hopefully in DC), end a week earlier, and get the whole week of Thanksgiving off to go to Seattle. I have to decide this week so I will have an answer soon!

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